And over the weekend, the saga regarding Canonical, GNOME, and KDE has continued. Lots of comments all over the web, some heated, some well-argued, some wholly indifferent. Most interestingly, Jeff Waugh and Dave Neary have elaborated on GNOME's position after the initial blog posts by Shuttleworth and Seigo, providing a more coherent look at GNOME's side of the story.

How android webos splashtop are just different forms of Linux. So Linux is gaining relevance. Ok some distributions might lose there relevance and disappear has this happened before yes. Should we expect this to happen in future yes.

He's clearly talking about traditional distributions and desktops.

Yes Linux powers Android, but does that really matter? What type of relevance is Linux gaining? Linux also powers my blu-ray player, does that confer benefits to some greater movement?

The Linux old-guard doesn't want to admit that their stalwarts (RMS, ESR) were wrong in some of their key assumptions. It's like a religion that refuses to accept reform and would rather die than admit that some of the founders were not actually prophets.

The open source holy war has been a giant mistake. MS and Apple would have more competition if the Linux movement had not been so hostile in its attitude towards proprietary software. That rigid open source ideology has merely served the interest of the largest proprietary companies. Linux needed parters of all types early on but the movement was arrogant and assumed hobby coders could do all the work.

As I said before the Linux desktop is back to being a hobby so this infighting is merely geek entertainment. Whether it has 5 or 500 desktops doesn't matter at this point.

The Linux old-guard doesn't want to admit that their stalwarts (RMS, ESR) were wrong in some of their key assumptions. It's like a religion that refuses to accept reform and would rather die than admit that some of the founders were not actually prophets.

The open source holy war has been a giant mistake. MS and Apple would have more competition if the Linux movement had not been so hostile in its attitude towards proprietary software. That rigid open source ideology has merely served the interest of the largest proprietary companies. Linux needed parters of all types early on but the movement was arrogant and assumed hobby coders could do all the work.

As I said before the Linux desktop is back to being a hobby so this infighting is merely geek entertainment. Whether it has 5 or 500 desktops doesn't matter at this point.

This is a completely valid opinion.... the only issue is it was RMS, ESR and other old-guard stalwarts who built the foundations we are building on today. They provided us with in infrastructure either directly, or by marshalling people to the cause.

The cause of "Free Software / Open Source Software" is what has created large portions of the modern infrastructure. This infrastructure is intertwined with a certain political (some would say religious) leanings believing that software should be "free".

The thing a lot of people don't get is that large swathes of the linux community care more about "Openness" then adoption. They would prefer the software be only used by three guys in their basements then to loose their freedom.

Other projects have more pragmatic approaches such as the BSDs. Distributions could base themselves on freebsd and offer a completely 100% stable ABI / API and what have you. Licensing would not be an issue, however no one has done this. There seems to be more value is being a Linux Distribution then a BSD distribution. I believe that this is because the value of the existing investments by the "Old-guard".

Each part of the ecosystem is owned by its contributors, many of which don't want the ecosystem to change, and it is their right to do what they like with their code.

If you think they aren't doing something advisable, you can tell them. However this community has already decided they either value the ideal of free software OR the contributions done by people who follow the idea.

At the end of the day there are always more sandboxes to play in (OSX, Windows, *BSD, Haiku, etc).

"How android webos splashtop are just different forms of Linux. So Linux is gaining relevance. Ok some distributions might lose there relevance and disappear has this happened before yes. Should we expect this to happen in future yes.

He's clearly talking about traditional distributions and desktops. "

And the problem is why does Linux have to compete against MS using a traditional desktop model. Nothing says it has to. Android supprise suprise with the work on tablets is adding interface shape a lot like traditional desktops.

Simple fact nt_jerkface get it. Linux is free to change the ball park. And the progress android makes with the project to allow android applications on linux and os x. Will make android progress go back to the desktop as well.

The idea they are different things is a problem. All major distribution today started off as a conner case performing a particular task bar Ubuntu and moved to desktop. History of distribution cycles don't change. Ubuntu over took its past form now Android the new kid on block is lining up to take out Ubuntu on desktop. After android something else will line up to take it out. Welcome the field of sharks the distribution world is.

Its always Linux has lost relevance when in fact at the moment we could be heading into another distribution blood bath. Where distrobutions who have not been progressing die. Just because relevance is moving between distributions does not mean Linux is losing relevance. It means something interesting is about to happen.